


Karma Bums and the Weirdest Night of My Life

by jedishampoo



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, beatniks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 00:20:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedishampoo/pseuds/jedishampoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU: It’s California in 1958, Daddy-o; Homura and his band of merry Buddhists find a strange golden-haired dude who’s got a secret that’s like crazy, man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Karma Bums and the Weirdest Night of My Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [helliongoddess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helliongoddess/gifts).



**Title: Karma Bums and The Weirdest Night of My Life**  
 **Pairing:** Sanzo/Homura  
 **Author's notes:** Pardon me while I put my older fics on AO3.  Originally written for 7thnight_smut, for the prompt of humor and Zen Buddhism. HG, I had so much fun writing this, you just don’t even know. This fic was inspired loosely by _Dharma Bums_ by Jack Kerouac, a story of Zen Buddhism and the Beat Generation. The result is insanity and I apologize in advance. I also apologize for my loose interpretation of Buddhist principles.  
  
  
  
***

  
What you’re going to read here is a true story. The people involved were real people, too, and unfortunately they might try and tell you that I was crazy and totally drinking too much wine and smoking too much weed in 1958, or that I’m just full of shit in general and it never happened. To answer the first charge, I hereby swear that I remember nearly everything in my life clearly, no matter what I was smoking or drinking, and what I didn’t see I was told. As for the second charge, fuck you, assholes, ‘cause you just don’t want anyone to know about it.   
  
I’m going to tell this story ‘cause I want to and because the little wife has just bought me this electronic typewriter and told me that it is time to do my part to earn her and her cooking by writing again, no poetry allowed. “This is a poetry-free typewriter,” says she. So here goes:  
  
Oh, before I start, I’ll promise right here that I’ll do my best to write it like a proper story-- in case you were worried you’d have to be listening to my voice the whole time. So. Again:  
  
As I already said, sort of, it was 1958 when the weirdest-ass shit I ever saw in my life went down. I was a total bum then, dropped out of college and hanging around Homura and his crowd of differently-flavored Buddhist Bhikkus. At the time I said I was there to search for myself but mostly I was there for the substances and the poetry and the sex. This was pre-free love, but we were still pretty free with our love, so there you are.  
  
Anyway, Homura was Homura Taishi, at least that was his Buddhist name and the only name I ever knew him by. He was, simultaneously, the coolest of the cool cats and the baddest of the bad asses in Santa Monica in 1958, an ex-professor of philosophy and ex-military man-turned-Zen Buddhist. Homura was a gorgeous dude in his mid-30s. He had one golden eye and one blue eye and was all black hair and fine features and he wore tight jeans and tight black shirts and black juju beads from Japan. The girls all wanted to fuck him and the guys all wanted to be him (and let’s not be sexist, some of the guys wanted to fuck him and some of the girls wanted to be him, but I’ll digress no more, maybe). He was the guru of Santa Monica. At least, until the weird-ass shit.  
  
I’m gonna start this story with the night after Homura found the Golden Cicada.   
  
It was a weeknight, probably Tuesday because The Hole was closed, I do remember that, and we were all at Homura’s place. Homura was sitting on his big armchair with his chin resting in one hand, staring off into space, looking like the lonely prince he was on his lonely throne. The rest of us were sitting around on cushions piled all over the floor, like pashas, drinking and joking and working ourselves up into some really good bullshit poetry.  
  
There was Sheen, who was Bernie Sheen, with his long silver hair and his eyes always half-closed so he always looked half-stoned. He was one of Homura’s two best pals from forever; the other was Zeno, AKA Art Zeno, who had wild orange hair and who’d lost an eye in the Navy and wore an eye-patch like a pirate.   
  
Then there was me, Joe, nee Joseph Shannon but reborn Gogo Jo as Homura called me, and Ku, or Gogo Ku, born George but also renamed by Homura when he joined the Sangha, a cute, gold-eyed-brown-haired kid, younger than me. You might think Homura had a thing for calling people “Gogo” but we were the only two I knew of.   
  
Then there was Eight, my best buddy back then and still my best buddy now: Hakkai Jones, half-Japanese, half-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant, reborn Eight as in the Eightfold Path. Then there was Ko and Gene-Fu and Ruby-- the most gorgeous girl I’ve ever known outside of my wife, Ruby the ebony goddess in her black skirts and leotards-- and her friends Sheila and Edith, pale as Ruby was dark. There were other people there, too, but I won’t bore you with all of their names.  
  
  
***  
  
  
“The first noble truth, my friends, is that _all life is suffering_ ,” Homura said when there was a lull in the general gaiety. He smiled at his friends as he shared Truth with them like he shared his wine. “I suffer, therefore I am alive. You suffer, therefore you are alive. Yet you are also the dream. The suffering is the dream and it has already ended. Understanding that is enlightenment. When I meditated today, I felt closer than ever.”  
  
“Dig it,” said Zeno. He was talking to Homura but staring at Ruby Smith.  
  
“Yeah, dig it,” said Sheen, from his quiet corner behind Eight and Gogo Ku.  
  
“I dig it, too, big daddy,” said Gogo Jo, he of the long red hair and long legs and cuddled up to the aforementioned Ruby. Gogo Jo was a little foolish and a little fond of the muggles and the booze, but he was a good soul and Homura had high hopes for him. Gogo Jo grinned and raised his glass of wine. “The dream has stolen my sufferings. And I’m dreamin’ of a white Christmas.”  
  
“Crazy,” said Zeno in his dark way, but Homura smiled. Truly, Gogo Jo was a wonder, a koan personified, for nearly everything nonsensical that fell from his lips was worth its weight in meditative ponderment.   
  
“More wine, please,” said Eight Jones politely, smiling with both his eyes and his mouth behind his horn-rimmed glasses and his goatee. Eight was Homura’s proudest addition to his circle of astonishment and like-mindedness, brought to him by Gogo Jo. Eight was half-Asian and studious and kind and yet had a dark past he chose not to discuss. Homura could see it in Eight’s eyes now and then, defeat like Marshal Tian Peng’s on his last day in heaven before he was reborn to suffer again.   
  
Striving for Nirvana was part of their communal suffering. Striving meant expending that most basic of Buddhist tenets-- personal effort-- and sharing the charity of dana. Homura would give and give to these people until Karma saw to it that they only gave back or to others. Karma, which depended on both spirit and actions, had been both cruel and kind to Homura. It had been cruel in what it had taken away before Homura had found the True Path, then kind in the charitable gift of many things: this house his refuge, given to Homura by a deceased friend and colleague at the college; the money that allowed him to share wine and food and wisdom; these friends and followers. And the incredible gift he’d received only the day before.  
  
“I found something last night,” Homura said. “Someone. A true Bodhisattva, I am convinced. Who would like to see him?”  
  
“What?” Zeno dragged his gaze away from the beauteous Ruby to stare at Homura with a wide eye.   
  
“Homura,” whispered Sheen.  
  
“I wanna see,” Gogo Jo and young Gogo Ku slurred in unison.   
  
“Me, too,” said Ruby. Edith and Sheila giggled.  
  
“Please,” Eight said, and swallowed his wine with refinement and delicacy.  
  
When everyone had stood and gathered and quieted, Homura led them into his bedroom. And there he was, Homura’s precious rescuee, stretched out supine upon the bed. Even the bandages wrapped around the man’s head did not disguise his beauty, his soft golden hair, his delicately strong chin. Homura had only caught a brief glimpse of his rescuee’s violet eyes and wild gaze before the light had gone out in them, a light that was still out, as the man yet breathed but had not awoken. Homura had also glimpsed the red chakra upon the man’s forehead, his mark of chosen-by-Buddha.   
  
“Pretty,” Gogo Jo said, echoed by Edith and Sheila’s laughter. “But kinda bent.”  
  
“Oh! snatched away in beauty's bloom, on thee shall press no ponderous tomb. This, my friends, is the reincarnation of a Golden Cicada of the Chinese Heaven, I am sure of it.”  
  
“What’s his story?” Zeno asked as everyone returned to the living room. He hooked a thumb in the direction of the bedroom. “You shoulda called me. I coulda helped.”  
  
“Not what you think, Zeno, my friend,” Homura told him. He saw that everyone was re-seated and comfortable on their lotus-pillows and that everyone had refreshment before sitting down himself. “It was a terrible and glorious December thunderstorm on the coast last evening, as you may have seen yourself or read in the newspaper. I was driving the coastal highway, coming home from a day-long meditative sojourn on the rocks at Sugar Moon Cove, and the night was thick and dark like death, the rain so very violent and viscous that I was going to stop my vehicle to meditate rather than struggle against it, when, in a brief stab of lightning’s illumination, I saw this man in the road. He had crashed his motorcycle. I brought him back with me. He had no identification, no money. Doctor Ravenwood came by this morning and bandaged him.”  
  
Homura did not tell them about the dark, slithery forms he’d seen hovering over the figure in the stabs of lightning previous or the smaller white flashes like fireworks or gunfire, because he couldn’t be wholly sure he hadn’t imagined them. What he hadn’t imagined was the orange-fire explosion of the man’s motorcycle on the rocks below the highway.  
  
“Super-murgatroid, what a crazy bind,” said Gogo Jo.  
  
What Homura also didn’t tell them was about how he was thinking of his sad, dead Rinny. You see, Homura had a dark past himself and was a lonely prince because he’d lost his first love when he was in college, before he’d joined the military. Oh, in case you didn’t guess, it’s me, Joe, jumping in here ‘cause I don’t wanna speculate in Homura’s voice about what happened to Rinny, but here’s what I understand: he was a young, earnest college student on scholarship at some school back east, and she was a rich girl at one of those women’s colleges, Vassar or whatever.   
  
Cue meeting at a concurrent camping trip in the Catskills, cue instant love. Cue her snobby parents refusing Homura because he was from the wrong side of the tracks. Aaaand what’s the worst thing you can do to young lovers? Keep them apart, of course.  
  
“I shall kill myself if I can never see you again,” weeps Rinny, born Rina or Rinarei VanDerSnoot or something like that.  
  
“Don’t worry, darling, be patient and our love will be fruitful,” says Homura.  
  
“No!” cries Rinny. “I _will_ kill myself, I shall take these pills!” Cue Rinny’s parents sending her to Terre Haute, Indiana for therapy, electroshock or whatever. By the way, I later heard that kind of thing happened to a lot of girls in our pre-free-love scene. Doing free drugs, or free sex, wasn’t as easy for the ladies to get away with in those days as it was for us guys.  
  
Anyway, back to Rinny, who gets out of therapy after faking out her white coats or whatever. She runs off in daddy’s car and drives and gets almost to Santa Monica and takes some more pills and at some point decides that she can’t choose between Homura and her parents.  
  
“Homura, my love, your name will be on my lips as I fall, always I think of you. Remember me ever as I was before, in the Catskills.”  
  
Yes, the twit wrote that on a piece of paper and then shoved it in the glove-box and drove her car off the cliff on the California coastal highway, somewhere near Sugar Moon Cove. “Snatched away in beauty's bloom, on thee shall press no ponderous tomb,” truly enough, thank you, Lord Byron.  
  
Anyway, that’s the story of Homura’s sad past from my point of view and now I’ll go back to the real story. Oh, before I forget, Homura always told us who we were reincarnated from, or who he’d guessed. I was a heavenly general, once, and Homura was a prince of war, which wouldn’t have surprised me at all. We all liked what he had to say so there wasn’t any reason to call bullshit or anything.   
  
  
  
***  
  
  
“Golden See-what?” Gogo Ku looked confused. Homura smiled at him, his innocent pupil whom he adored. Gogo Ku’s huge, yellow eyes showed-- more than most people’s ever could-- that he was already enlightened but unaware of it.   
  
“Cicada. Those locust-like four-stringmen of the summer evening,” Homura told him. “This particular one, however, was a Mahayana Bodhisattva, not my flavor of Buddhism but a being which I embrace on a spiritual level. Order and duty were his job.”  
  
“Whatta gig,” laughed Gogo Jo.  
  
Eight was sitting next to Gogo Jo, and put a hand on his shoulder as if to quiet him. Eight was ever practical. “Is he in a coma? Perhaps he should be in a hospital?”  
  
Homura shook his head. “My friend, does he look as if he would be cared for by our middle-class conservatory? At least here he may have a name, and he will be accepted for as long as he wishes. And Dr. Ravenwood assures me he will recover.”  
  
Eight subsided and poured more dark wine-- wine that looked to Homura more like blood than ever-- for himself, Gogo Jo and Ruby.   
  
“I’m glad you saved ‘im,” Gogo Ku added with a sweet grin. Edith grinned back at him and did not giggle, for once.  
  
Homura watched them both with silent approval. Sheila, as well, was edging ever closer to Eight. It was the closest the two girls had gotten to any of the male members of Homura’s group-- outside of the orgies, of course. Girls so often were taught to value their childbearing bodies over their own minds and souls. Homura was glad they were finally learning to join in.   
  
He was much more glad to sit back and reflect upon his golden rescuee, his rescuer. He couldn’t wait to discover his real name and give him a new one if he wished; to hear his voice, to know what he knew, to know what had happened on the coast in that storm. Around Homura his gathering gained a life of its own, as his gatherings usually did.  
  
“The Hole tomorrow, right?” someone said.  
  
“Louie’s bringing his axe and Rogeroo’s promised the skins, he’s totally gone on those,” someone else raptured.  
  
“Gogo Jo’s bringing the weed, joy.”  
  
“Bash’ll be a blast, tootin’ my way into the jar, cats.” That was Gogo Jo, as expressive as ever. “Still-n-all, why save it for The Hole?”  
  
“I hear that, cat. See crack-ed ceiling, find my way home in the lines, the black on white path.”  
  
Homura closed his eyes and sighed. That was spontaneity, the beautiful exhalation of creative spirits in creative times. The world shined most brightly right before its end.  
  
“Yah, Haiku!” came several shouts.  
  
“Weren’t no haiku, that came from the mind, not the heart.”  
  
“’S where it comes from. Haiku comes from the mind at rest, see, and speaks to the heart.”  
  
“More wine, please.”  
  
“Essence of seeing the essence of the thing, man.”  
  
“Fan flays my tired flesh, my soul spatters and, uh--” That had been Gogo Jo, for once at a loss for words, it seemed. “Soul splattered sprayed like kicked-out gravel--”  
  
“Jesus Christ, do you assholes ever shut the fuck up?”  
  
Homura’s eyes flew open at that, the deepest, smokiest, sexiest voice he’d ever heard.   
  
It was his Cicada, his violet-eyed Bodhisattva, golden and bandaged and beautiful and leaning on the bedroom doorjamb, wearing only his torn jeans. He lit a cigarette and glared at them all.  
  
  
***  
  
  
The guy told us we could call him Sanzo. Sanzo, not-so-secretly known to Homura as the Golden Cicada. Sanzo was a Jap-sounding name and he didn’t look Oriental in the slightest, but then our Buddhist names weren’t the most westernized, either, so we didn’t press him. Homura wouldn’t have pressed Sanzo, anyway, was just staring at him all stupefied. Anyway, Sanzo had a gripe and a smoke and a sip or two of water and then he fainted onto Eight. Sanzo was a tough bastard but he’d had a helluva crash out on the highway.  
  
Oh, speaking of Eight-- he called a few minutes ago to see how the new typewriter was doing and I told him what was up. He says he’ll back me up on this story, so, again, fuck you to the rest of you lying assholes who aren’t Eight. Eight also told me something else that I never knew until now. It was very interesting and weird and somewhat connected to this story, but I won’t bring it up now because it would only confuse things.  
  
So: Sanzo. Helluva crash. Fainting. It took a few more days of healing before Sanzo was up and about for any length of time. And since Sanzo’d griped about the noise of us Bhikkus, it was at least a couple of days before we could all gather at Homura’s again. We had The Hole, of course, and some great jams there and all, but The Hole was public and the Sangha was a select and private sort of group whose members understood each other and sometimes had group sex, and so soon we were back at Homura’s, Sanzo or no Sanzo.  
  
  
***  
  
  
 _...Beat! beat! drums! -- blow! bugles! blow!  
Make no parley -- stop for no expostulation,   
Mind not the timid -- mind not the weeper or prayer,   
Mind not the old man beseeching the young man..._  
Beat! Beat! Drums! By Walt Whitman  
  
Sanzo pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, closed his eyes, and raised his eyebrows. He raised his eyebrows again. His headache eased a little. He opened his eyes and sighed at having to look at the collected idiots. It was his own fault for venturing out of Homura’s pad’s second bedroom, and his annoyance was his punishment.   
  
Truthfully, though, he was too bored to sit in the bedroom any longer, having spent a few days in there. He wasn’t yet healed enough to leave the house in case he ran into _them_ ; he’d have to give it a few more days and accept Homura’s admittedly abundant generosity until he felt strong enough to hit the road. Besides, Sanzo thought that perhaps Homura, and maybe one of his two old-guy buddies, might be good in a fight.  
  
So he was staying here for now, and that meant it was either the bedroom alone, or the idiots.  
  
There were about fifteen idiots, not counting Homura. They were mostly male and they mostly did nothing but drink and yak and screw and smoke marijuana and make up their own Buddhist philosophy. Truthfully, most westerners made up their own Buddhism, and Sanzo understood that this was because they didn’t have local temples and gurus and they didn’t understand the Asian mindset.   
  
Sanzo had met a few exceptions in his years on Earth-- mostly Europeans or Australians backpacking in China before the party came down on outsiders. Homura came close. Even that guy, however, was confused on some things, and he was passing on his confusion and self-centered angst to his followers like it was a head-cold.  
  
Their confusion was not Sanzo’s problem, however. Sanzo begged some booze off the closest-to-reasonable-it-seemed of the entire tribe, Eight Jones. Eight handed Sanzo a glass of blood-red wine and then stared at him for a full thirty seconds, eyes wide under his black-rimmed glasses. Sanzo finally ventured to speak to him in a low voice.  
  
“So how did _you_ end up in this racket?” Sanzo asked, waving his wine at the collective misguided idiocy.  
  
Eight stared back as he answered calmly. “Joseph found me bleeding on a railroad track a year or so ago. I was trying to kill myself, you see. I’ve since changed my mind. Where Joseph goes, there go I.”  
  
“Yeah? Good for you,” Sanzo muttered. He edged away. Across the way Homura was gesturing at him from his chair, the only piece of furniture in the entire goddamned room. Sanzo narrowed his eyes and gave Homura an annoyed look. Homura smiled beneficently and bowed his head. With a grunt, Sanzo gave up and went over to sit against the wall next to his host.   
  
“You need something?” Sanzo asked.  
  
“I’m so pleased to see you join us. I’m so pleased you are feeling better, Sanzo, my Golden Cicada.”  
  
“I’m not a fucking cicada so don’t call me cicada,” Sanzo bitched, then sighed. It wasn’t Homura’s fault Sanzo had been injured, and he’d done Sanzo a good turn by plucking his ass from the road. Homura my have been only unknowingly helping himself in the long run, but Sanzo owed the guy a civil reply, at the very least. “Thank you for taking care of me, by the way.”  
  
“You are so welcome. All are welcome here, within reason.” Homura fingered the beads at his neck above his black shirt, a black shirt very like Sanzo’s. Sanzo’s silk shirt had been torn in his attack-slash-accident a few nights back and re-stitched by one of Homura’s girls, Sanzo hadn’t been told which.   
  
Sanzo sipped his wine and lit a Lucky and looked around the room. He shuddered a little when his gaze roved over Eight, and again when he saw that utter dumbass Gogo Jo. Gogo Ku caught his eye and Sanzo felt compelled to give the kid a short nod of acknowledgment, though he could never have explained to anyone why.  
  
“Why are those two double-fives?” he asked Homura, for something to say.  
  
Homura’s interestingly and differently-colored eyes widened in something that looked like glee. “You speak Japanese, then?”  
  
“Ah. Maybe a little.”  
  
Homura stared at him, more intently even than Eight had. “Because of the five precepts they embody for me. The precepts they will one day embrace when they learn to find their own ways and discover their own states of enlightenment. I hope they do so before the end of it all, which I feel is near. If only they could learn to lack wine and bodies and shoplifting and lying; I suppose they are innocent of killing, unless one is vegetarian and embraces the Ahimsa principle of nonviolence--”  
  
“You’re attaching importance to the wrong things, you know. You think that Zen is just-- shit, nothing. Never mind.” Sanzo had been goaded into accidental speech but still had absolutely no intention of getting into a discussion of Buddhist principles with Homura or any of his followers. That was a job for someone else. Sanzo had his own job to do here in California, and he’d always been shit at teaching others, anyway.  
  
He was saved by a yell from the gathered idiocy.   
  
“I’m wigging out! That’s crazy, chickie!” It was Gogo Jo, shrieking at Ruby, who shrieked back at him.  
  
“No lie, baby. My daddy’s a Baptist preacher from Georgia. Why you think I ran outta there to California?”  
  
“Witch doctor, man,” someone said, blowing useless slang like this group seemed to love to do. _God_ , Sanzo hated California, so very much.  
  
“I told the Witch Doctor I was in love with you, baby,” Gogo Jo sang, _oohing_ and _eeeing_ and _ahhing_ until Sanzo wanted to shoot him, so badly his fingers itched for his lost pistol. Ruby seemed to feel the same way. She glared at Jo with her hands on her hips.  
  
“You tryin’ to say something, baby?”  
  
“Ain’t never, ain’t never, you’re eighteen-karat chickie-kee, I’m booted when you look at me.”  
  
“Shut up, _fuck_ ,” Sanzo moaned.  
  
“Om mani hatsu may oon, what’s the sound of one hand clapping, om?” Gogo Jo was on some kind of idiot’s roll. “I feel a tantra comin’ on. Homura, my friend, hates the Bhikku’s ritual, he says, but it focuses me, baby. Focuses me right on you.”  
  
“Mmmm, om mani, baby,” Ruby murmured, apparently forgiving Gogo Jo and climbing onto his lotus-legged lap and pulling off her shirt. She had lovely, smooth, brown skin and firm rounded breasts, breasts she shoved onto Jo’s undeserving red head.  
  
And shit! Sanzo’d already had to listen to all of them going at it last night. His hard-on had gone away eventually, but it had still been annoying as hell. Sanzo looked for the wine-jug and watched as Sheila knocked it over when she leapt onto Eight. Sanzo crawled over and rescued what he could, taking a swig or two or three straight from the bottle while Eight removed his glasses and got kooky with Sheila. Gogo Ku and Ko doubled up on taking care of Edie and soon the entire room was one fast-and-loose mass of naked skin, _oohing_ and _ahhing_ and _mming_ just like they had the previous night.  
  
Hell, even those warhorses Zeno and Sheen were getting hot and heavy in there, and Sanzo couldn’t even tell if there was a girl between them or not.   
  
“Are you not well enough to join in?” a smooth voice asked. Sanzo whipped around to see Homura, also not involved, just staring at him from his chair. His golden eye looked like it was glowing.  
  
“Ah. Not my bag-- shit!” Sanzo hated when he caught himself speaking Californian; he was picking up this remedial class’s bad habits. “Not my hobby, I mean.”  
  
“I would ask if you abhor the sensual along with our other four aforementioned verboten precepts, except I’ve seen the way you drink,” Homura said. Sanzo opened his mouth to say that he didn’t know what the fuck Homura was talking about, but Homura continued before he could say it. “I’ve seen your chakra and know a little of what it means. I would know you by your aura anyway, Golden Cicada, and there’s something special in your eyes. Tell me what you know. Please.”  
  
Sanzo sighed and glugged another gulp of wine straight from the bottle. “I’ve traveled in the Far East a bit. That’s all and I have nothing to teach and I’m still not a cicada,” he said, grudgingly.  
  
“You also have a warrior’s body and reflexes,” Homura said, his eye as glowy and distracting as ever when Sanzo looked at him.  
  
“I’m not discussing my body with you, either. Or my reflexes.”  
  
Around them, some of the _oohs_ and _ahhs_ and _mmms_ and _babys_ and sounds of skin hitting skin were heading towards a crescendo. Sanzo’s dick twitched in sympathy, and maybe envy, inside his jeans and he thought, _well, fuck it all_ and he leaned against the wall to watch the action.   
  
It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested in sex; he just wasn’t into _group_ sex. He could enjoy the show but would never be _part_ of the show. Homura would be surprised if he traveled a bit, saw what monkey business the monks got up to in Shanghai or even Sri Lanka. The five precepts be damned, the folks here weren’t necessarily sinning on their way to enlightenment.   
  
The world was large and varied and there were many rights and who was to say Homura would be wrong, if only he wasn’t swearing up and down that what he was doing was related in any way to Zen. Sanzo had seen Zen temples in Japan and Ch’an temples in China, and you never saw a more ritualized or strict bunch of old, grumpy motherfucking monks telling their initiates what to do. It was nothing like the freedom and self-determination that Americans seemed to apply to everything so happily.  
  
Sanzo was surprised at how much he liked Homura, anyway. Homura was misled and overly angsty concerning his own past and a little self-satisfied at times, but he’d never refused anyone anything, at least not that Sanzo had seen or heard in his time in Santa Monica. Sanzo respected that.  
  
It was more than clear that Homura liked Sanzo in return. He liked Sanzo way too much, in fact. Sanzo decided that when he left he’d do it quietly, to cause as little fuss as possible; he’d get his job done and find another hog and be on the road before Homura could worry about him or look for him.  
  
“Why aren’t you--?” Sanzo waved at the general mass of idiot-fucking.  
  
“Mmm. Sometimes,” Homura murmured. “Tonight I’ll just watch with you.”  
  
Sanzo couldn’t say it wasn’t arousing, or that it hadn’t been a very long time since he’d screwed instead of killed something. He watched and thought about touching himself. He thought about being one of the guys fucking a girl, then thought about being one of the guys fucking a guy.   
  
He could feel Homura’s eyes on him, like a physical caress, a golden touch and a blue presence. Homura spoke of auras; Sanzo knew auras and Homura’s chi was robust and usually unfocused. Tonight, however, it was focused tightly, on him-- Sanzo.   
  
“Ting tang, _mmm baby_ walla walla bang-- _ah!_ Ah!”  
  
“Just shut the fuck up and fuck already,” Sanzo sighed, and lit another Lucky.  
  
  
***  
  
  
Oh, hell. Ruby. What a doll. She dated Zeno for a while after I got clean, and now she’s back in Georgia going to school and being married to a lawyer in her tiny Georgia town and being a mom. And I hereby apologize to my wife, both for Ruby and for the brief bits of poetry laid down here. It was a part of the time, sweetheart.   
  
And you’ll like the next bit, I promise. Before everything got all fucked up.  
  
  
***  
  
 _And War, which for a moment was no more,  
Did glut himself again; a meal was bought   
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart   
Gorging himself in gloom..._  
Darkness, by Lord Byron  
  
  
Homura looked around the close-pressed, sweaty crowd inside The Hole, and wished he’d stayed home with Sanzo. Sanzo Sanzo Sanzo, grumpy and glowing and unlike any being Homura had ever known or seen. Sanzo’s entire being breathed destiny, while Homura had merely been waiting for the dream of suffering to end. Was it any wonder a sad being such as himself was so drawn to Sanzo?  
  
The music at the club was good; the usual guitar-man and drum-thumper had been joined by a couple of African sax-men passing through town on their way to L.A. Their skin was blacker than night and gleamed with lights and sweat and their cheeks were puffed as they broke it down into burning solos until the crowd called _wild, wild_ at them.   
  
Between tunes Homura’s friends took their turns on stage, beating out poetry so brilliant that even the band-men were stomping and crying “preach it!” There were new people and the regular crowd alike and it was Rome before the fall, the very end of it all, surely, because such raw and free commingled emotion could never be topped.  
  
And still, Homura thought of Sanzo. He thought of how he’d caught Sanzo cross-legged on the bed with his eyes closed and his palms and forefingers pressed together, gathering his gorgeous aura. Sanzo had jumped off the bed when Homura had entered the bedroom, as if he’d been caught masturbating or as if Homura had been a threat.  
  
Even the incipient creative spontaneity of Armageddon could not compete with that. Homura needed to be home with Sanzo. He peeled himself out of the sweaty crowd and sped home with the top down on his Chevy.  
  
When he stood on his own doorstep Homura could hear Sanzo through the open window, speaking to someone. He went inside and Sanzo was on the phone. Sanzo turned and rolled his eyes when he saw Homura looking at him sadly. He said _thanks_ and hung up.  
  
“I used your phone, thanks. I called collect,” he added.  
  
“You’re welcome, and unnecessary. What I have is yours. Always.”  
  
Sanzo turned and walked into the bedroom. He emerged after a few moments carrying his leather jacket. Homura had cleaned it himself.  
  
“Why aren’t you at your club?” Sanzo asked.  
  
“I couldn’t let the world end without saying goodbye to you,” Homura told him. He feared Sanzo more than he’d ever feared another person, and still he told Sanzo that thing, left himself vulnerable.  
  
“Well,” Sanzo said, and lit a cigarette. “You’re just in time. I have to go.”  
  
“Please don’t.” Homura had known it was coming, but that didn’t stop his chest from tightening or his belly from churning like they hadn’t in fifteen years, because he’d just then realized that he’d been numb or dead for a very long time. He’d just realized why he felt alive again.  
  
“What do you want, then?” Sanzo asked. He stared at Homura hard, unflinching, his stare like jewels.  
  
“Love me like I love you.”   
  
“I can’t do that.”   
  
“I know.” Homura was empowered in his fear, because nothing could ever top it. He stepped close and clasped Sanzo’s shoulders and kissed him. Sanzo sighed and it was resignation and annoyance and his breath was smoke and humid like August evenings and fireflies.  
  
“You’re making me something I’m not,” Sanzo said when he pulled back after a few moments. He was still close, searching Homura’s gaze from three inches away, five of his slender, strong fingers clasping Homura’s cheek.   
  
Homura flattened his palm against Sanzo’s belly for a reply, felt the warm silk of his shirt and his taut skin just beneath. “And...?”  
  
“Shit,” Sanzo said. He jabbed his cigarette into the ashtray on the chair-arm. “I can’t love you or stay. Get it?”  
  
“I understand. No love, no stay. Touch me, my--”  
  
“And no cicadas,” Sanzo interrupted. “I hate fucking locusts.”  
  
“No cicadas,” Homura agreed.  
  
Sanzo kissed not like a Bodhisattva at all, but an earthly being, tongue and summer-night breath. Homura was afraid and overjoyed and turned on all at once for minutes like precious drops of time.   
  
In the master bedroom they stepped apart and watched each other undress, like a skin-peeling contest because they both wore their clothing so tightly. Sanzo was perfect, slender, all wiry muscle under smooth, golden skin. Here and there his perfection was enhanced by tiny, gleaming, diamond-like scars. Homura wished Sanzo wasn’t leaving, because he wanted to learn about all of them.  
  
“You say you won’t teach and it saddens me,” Homura murmured into Sanzo’s sweaty, soft hair when they had stretched out on the bed for a few minutes, kissing and getting sweaty above the covers. “You could. You are an old soul.”  
  
“You’re still looking for something I’m not. Here, old man.” Sanzo clasped Homura’s shoulders and yanked sideways until Homura rolled over to his stomach. Sanzo taught with his hands, pulled Homura to his knees and in his straightforward way jostled his dry, silky cock hard into the cleft of Homura’s buttocks. “What do you have for this?” He jutted his hips again and pushed his finger against Homura’s anus.  
  
Homura shoved his hand into his bedside drawer and found the closest jar of lubricant, courtesy of the university’s medical department and always handy because all manner of love was welcome in Homura’s house. Sanzo grunted his approval and Homura breathed and sank his face into the pillow and felt his knees slide apart on the sheets and his body stretch for Sanzo, Sanzo, Sanzo, grumpy and grunting and his heartbeat a part of Homura with the first thrust, the second, and the drawn-out, thumping pause that followed.   
  
Sanzo’s breath hissed into his hair from behind, into his ear, as his breastbone rode Homura’s spine and his fingers clenched about Homura’s cock.   
  
“Your-- _hah_ \--” Sanzo said and thrust. “ _Nnni_ hilism is your revenge, but don’t drag _them_ into your selfish, blank Armageddon.”  
  
“No,” Homura breathe-moaned at the feeling of Sanzo’s cock thudding into him, the aching life behind his own testicles where all had been numb. “I see that now.”  
  
“Their paths will only fall, unguided, into disease, addiction, and madness.” Sanzo’s voice was harsh and thick.   
  
“I know.”  
  
“Good.” Sanzo stopped teaching and fucked, back and forth. The sound of Sanzo loving him without loving him was not only harsh breath and the slap of skin, it was giant brass gongs in ancient temples and wooden beads clacking and chants-- _ah_ , the feel of sweaty hands stinging his hips and the smell of pine and myrrh.  
  
Homura was glad to be a poet, to remember being fucked like it was a song or a movie. It would be his favorite of either for a very long time. When Sanzo’s voice broke high on his breathed _ahs_ , like singing, Homura uncoiled and came, and came, and came, shuddering until Sanzo jerked into his body that last time, then a last-and-a-half, breathing hard.  
  
Sanzo stayed for a smoke, at least, stretched out naked next to Homura on the bed. He taught a little more, dropping crumbs that Homura devoured.  
  
“You should travel,” Sanzo told him, exhaling smoke into the thick scent of sex. “I’ll bet you were in the Navy. Tour of South America and Europe.”  
  
“Yes,” Homura said. He didn’t even wonder how Sanzo knew. “I’d love to see Africa. Asia.”  
  
“Do it,” Sanzo said, and extinguished his cigarette. “Fuck,” he added, when they heard the front door open and heard drunken laughter.  
  
Sanzo flew out of bed and yanked on his jeans and his shirt, right over his sticky, come-covered belly. He was out the door of the bedroom before Homura had even crawled out of bed. Homura supposed he would never learn all he wanted to about Sanzo’s astonishing reflexes.   
  
“Homura! We brought some new chums back with us,” someone called as Homura was pulling on his own clothes. He thought it was Gene-Fu, probably. Homura dressed a little more quickly so he could greet his new guests with some pride of presentation.  
  
He forgot all presentation when he heard Sanzo bark, “Don’t invite those bastards in! Shit!”  
  
Homura sprinted out of the bedroom to see what must have been a dozen very pale strangers shoving their way into his house, their twisted smiles growing evil fangs and their eyes glowing red and their skin sparkling in the light like quartz. Gogo Jo and Ruby were on the floor where they’d tumbled and they were scrabbling out of the way backwards on their hands like crabs. Sanzo stepped over them and stood looking at the pale newcomers.  
  
“Too late, goddammit. You let ‘em in,” Sanzo said.  
  
A tall and terrifyingly beautiful, white-skinned man slithered his way to the front of the... pack, Homura supposed he could call it. “Oh, it’s you, asshole. You ain’t dead. You’ll be the first to die here.”  
  
Sanzo, very slowly, bent his knees and distributed his weight between his front and back feet. Then he stretched out his arms and curled his fingers and closed his eyes and took a deep breath and Homura held his own breath, unable to speak for waiting.  
  
Sanzo yanked his arm back and then whipped it forward lightning-quick, hitting the white-skinned man on the chin. It looked like a mere flick but the man flew back into his buddies like he’d been whacked with a sledgehammer. Before Homura could blink, Sanzo had a sliver of wood in his hand and another wrist-snap embedded the sliver into the man’s chest. Sanzo kicked and sent it home. The man screamed and started... _melting_ into a gooey puddle-stain on Homura’s floor.   
  
Sanzo was already on the next man with another sliver of wood-- a stake-- and he’d killed another of the pale invaders-- a vampire. They were _vampires_ , and Sanzo’s golden hair was flying and he was killing vampires with his hands and feet and reflexes and pieces of wood from Homura’s spider-infested log-pile out back.  
  
He wasn’t able to marvel at this for long, because suddenly, all of them-- Homura’s part of the Sangha-- were being attacked at once. Homura and Sheen and Zeno were fighting alongside Sanzo and those who couldn’t fight stayed the hell out of the way.  
  
  
***  
  
  
Sanzo was wielding the power of Shaolin Buddhist kung-fu, my friends; martial-arts fighting skills with the power of chi behind them. And yeah, the sparkly assholes were vampires, all right. I’ve already said that this is all true and I’ve already told you that Eight will back me up, but I thought I’d reiterate those things just in case.   
  
Sanzo, you don’t like me telling all this, fuck you, too, come see me. I’m in Reno, on Plumb Street. And Eight, by the way, has just told me about his chi and some of the study suggestions you mumbled to him all those years ago, you pair of stingy motherfuckers. Eight says he can do some very interesting things with his chi and he’s promised to show me tomorrow, and he lives on Liberty Drive, in case you want to come looking for him, too.  
  
I’ll finish the tale, now that I’ve said these things. Sweetheart, I hope you liked the sexy man-on-man parts of the story, anyway.   
  
  
***  
  
  
Sanzo hung from the light-fixture on the ceiling and kicked a stake over to the eye-patched and fierce Zeno, who was doing a decent job of fighting one of the UDMFs (Quick note from Joe: Un-Dead-Mother-Fuckers).   
  
He took a quick glance around. He thought there’d been fourteen to begin with. He’d killed five, already, and Homura and Zeno and Sheen each had one. That left six and _holy fuck_ , he wished he had his pistol but even more he wished that utter dumbass of a Gogo Jo would shut the fuck up. The dumbass was hovering in a corner with his arms around two squealing chicks and was watching Sanzo with wide eyes and blathering a running commentary on the action in idiotese like a damned sports announcer.  
  
“Sanzo is like Mickey Mantle, baby, bejeezus lightning, all my scratch is on the Golden Locust in this rumble, tump tee _tump_. And he’s laid on a murder for two more, like wow--”  
  
“Shut the fuck up,” Sanzo ground out as he dropped to the floor and rescued two of his last few stakes from the liquefying chests of the unholy bloodsuckers he’d just killed.   
  
“Just makin’ the scene, joy.”  
  
Sanzo decided to ignore further idiotese. He flipped his toes outward and pressed his forefingers together and breathed; _dan dao, dan dao_ , single saber technique times two, and two more were dead with two to go.  
  
A tall UDMF screamed and charged at Sanzo, one clawed hand outstretched to rend for maximum blood. Sanzo let chi flow to his wrists as the creature’s claws glanced off the heel of his left palm, made hard as a steel bridge-- _xiao pao quan_ , small cannon fist-- then, as the vampire’s momentum carried him past, his wrist was as fluid and smooth as river-water flowing under the bridge-- _xiao hong quan_ , small flood fists. Sanzo landed one blow on the back of the UDMF’s neck and another on his chest, the second including a stake to secure the creature’s ultimate destruction.   
  
Sanzo could feel the one diving in from behind him in the flow of the room’s air-currents. He leapt straight up, letting the UDMF stumble underneath so he could land with his feet on the vampire’s shoulders, one foot on either side of its jaws. A quick knee-twist broke its neck. Before it could heal, Sanzo drop-kicked a stake into its thorax. He preferred southern tiger-style for its speed, but its offshoot, monkey-style, was good for jumping attacks.  
  
The only two UDMFs still alive were being occupied by Sheen and Homura, so Sanzo killed them easily from behind.  
  
Gogo Jo started clapping in the resulting few seconds of silence. “Made in the shade, pumpkin-butter.”  
  
Sanzo had already made a vow to ignore the idiotese. While his more human companions caught their breaths he began counting the dead, slime and human. There were fourteen stains on the floor, and two dead men. Gene and someone he thought was called Ron-ton.  
  
“Tumpty and jeeze. Now I wanna fuck, you know?”  
  
“You’re fucking next,” Sanzo told him, heading into the corner with his fingers outstretched.  
  
“You may kick ass but you’re a real bringdown, man,” Gogo Jo said, then slid his fingers across his lips in the universal _quiet_ gesture, thereby saving his own, pathetic life.  
  
  
***  
  
  
For the third time, I’ll swear this is all true.  
  
Sanzo split not long after threatening my poor life. He said he’d already called his bank to wire him money for a new motorcycle. He didn’t even want a ride from Homura or a bag to carry shit in or anything; he just wanted to leave. The vampires were the reason he’d come to southern California, and once they were dead, he said he wanted the hell out. Don’t ask me; I always thought it was a great place to live.  
  
He talked to Homura for a minute or two but I don’t know what they said to each other; Homura never told me. But after the night of the vampires, Homura’s Sangha sort of dissolved. Homura became different. He was less down all the time. He wanted to travel. He kept offering to put me back into college. I never did go back before Homura left town to travel. Eventually, of course, I went back to school on my own, and I think he’d be glad to know but I never saw him again to tell him.  
  
Eight, still called Eight because he’s still Buddhist, talked to Sanzo, too. And, as you all know, it’s only just recently that I found out what that was all about. While I was in college, Eight was off studying kung-fu. I’ll admit that I’ve always wondered why Eight was so straightened out when he found me after graduation, but I never asked ‘cause I was just glad of it.  
  
Sanzo didn’t talk to me at all, just flipped me the bird on his way out the door. Back at you, bro.  
  
  
 **END.**  
  
 ** _Thank you for reading!_**  
  
 **Glossary:**  
 _Ahimsa:_ Principle of non-violence toward other living beings; why so many Buddhists are vegetarians.  
 _Double-fives:_ “Gogo” can be read like “fivefive” in Japanese. The Five Precepts are not killing, not stealing, not lying, not engaging in illicit sex acts, and not drinking intoxicating beverages or substances.  
 _Bhikku:_ A seeker of enlightenment/follower of Buddha  
 _Bodhisattva:_ one who’s attained enlightenment but chooses to wait for Nirvana in order to help others seek it.  
 _Koan:_ A phrase used during Zen Buddhist meditation.  
 _Muggle:_ Slang for marijuana-- really!  
 _Sangha:_ Buddhists as a group-- all of them.  
 _Witch doctor:_ Slang for a Christian cleric.  
Warning: A lot of Gogo Jo’s slang was found on the web, and a lot of it I made up. Please pardon me for that but damn, it was fun to do. 


End file.
